Within 10 years, Canada will see a shortage of 800,000 skilled workers, saiys Linda Duxbury, a professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business and a workplace expert.

Photographed by:Sculpies, Fotolia.com

There's a looming shortage of qualified construction trades-people in Canada, and while that's a good thing for the skilled trades, it's less so for everyone else from homebuyers to residential and commercial builders.

That was the take-away message at a one-day event Tuesday attended by 400 employers and potential employees in Ottawa's construction industry. Organized by the provincially funded and awkwardly named group Ottawa Integrated Local Labour Market Planning, the event was held at the Algonquin Centre for Construction Excellence. It combined a morning session for employers about how to survive a changing labour market with an afternoon information/job fair program for Algonquin College students and other job seekers.

Within 10 years, Canada will see a shortage of 800,000 skilled workers, said the morning keynote speaker, Linda Duxbury, a professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business and a workplace expert. The reasons enumerated by Duxbury and others range from the imminent, large-scale retirement of existing tradespeople to our habit over the past few decades of encouraging young people to shun the trades in favour of high-tech and other sectors.

In Ottawa, a relatively stable economy together with large infrastructure projects like the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park and Light Rail Transit construction will suck up skilled trades, resulting in more demand than supply, according to the 2012 Ottawa Integrated Local Labour Market Plan, which reported on the state of the labour market and offered a plan to enhance it.

Even a new program to increase the number of skilled foreign trades-people entering Canada announced by Immigration minister Jason Kenney late last year will have minimal impact, especially in residential construction. It allows for the entry of just 3,000 people per year, including welders and pipefitters, trades not normally associated with home building.

None of this is news to Greg Graham, Cardel Homes' Ottawa president and one of the panellists for a morning discussion on building a strong workforce.

Labour shortages have been a growing and serious issue in residential construction for several years, he said in an interview. "It used to take five months from the time of sale until the house was built. Now it's six or eight months. House prices have gone up, too, because there's a shortage of trades so they demand higher pay."

Graham said that finish carpenters, drywallers and others are hardest to find.

On the other hand, when he speaks at schools, students seem increasingly interested in working with their hands and "actually producing something."

A 2012 report by the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada, meanwhile, says labour shortages come and go fairly quickly and the situation for skilled tradespeople in Canada is generally healthy.

Greg Zwiers is cautiously optimistic. The 19-year-old building construction technician student, who graduates this summer, was cruising the job fair with a friend.

He plans to work in residential construction and is confident that, provided he can first land an apprenticeship without undue difficulty, he'll be home free. In addition to a technical knowledge of construction, Zwiers said tradespeople "need good social skills because you're working in a team."

A class prevented him from seeing the afternoon's star attraction: Renovator Mike Holmes of HGTV's Holmes Makes It Right fame. The burly Holmes delivered a rambling presentation on his own career and television show, green building and the need for greater regulation and professionalization of the home construction industry.